Case Study: NFP Medical Research Center

Background

Your name is Alexis Adams and you are the director of external affairs for a national, not-for-profit medical research center that does research on diseases related to aging. The center's work depends on funding from multiple sources, including the general public, individual estates, and grants from corporations, foundations, and the federal government.

Your department prepares an annual report of the center's accomplishments and financial status for the board of directors. It is mostly text with a few charts and tables, all in black and white, with a simple cover. It is voluminous and pretty dry reading. It is inexpensive to produce other than the effort to pull together the content, which requires time to request and expedite information from the center's Other departments.

At the last board meeting, the board members suggested the annual report be "upscaled" (or improved) into a document that could be used for marketing and promotional purposes. They want you to mail the following annual report to the center's various stakeholders and past donors and target high-potential future donors. The board feels that such a document is needed to get the center "in the same league" with other significant not-for-profit organizations with which it feels it competes for donations and funds. The board feels that the annual report could be used to inform these stakeholders about the advances the center is making in its research efforts and its fiscal solid management for effectively using the funding and donations it receives.

You will need to produce a shorter, more superficial easy-to-read annual report that shows the benefits of the center's research and the impact on people's lives. You will include the following:

• Pictures from various hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities that are using the results of the centers' research
• Testimonials from patients and families who have benefited from the center's research

The report must be:

• catching" (attracts attention),
• multi-color,
• contain a lot of pictures and easy-to-understand graphics
• written in a style that can be understood by the average adult potential donor

This is a significant undertaking for your department (you and three other staff members). You will have to contract out some of the activities and may have to travel to several medical facilities around the country to take photos and get testimonials. You will also need to put the design, printing, and distribution out to bid to various contractors to submit proposals and prices. You estimate that approximately 5 million copies need to be printed/mailed.

It is now May 1^st. The board has asked you to come to its next meeting on May 30 to present a detailed plan, schedule, and budget for how you will complete the project. The board wants the annual report distributed to all stakeholders by November 15 so potential donors will receive it during the holiday season when they may be in a 'giving mood.' The center's fiscal year ends September 30 and the financial statements should be available by October 15. However, the non-financial information for the report can be pulled together right after the May 30 board meeting.

It is good that you are taking a project management course, and see this as an opportunity to apply what you have learned! You know that this is a big project and that the board has high expectations. You want to be sure you meet their expectations and get them to approve the budget you need for this project. However, they will only do that if they are confident that you have a detailed plan for how you will get it all done. You and your staff have two weeks to make a plan to present to the board on May 30. If approved, you have from May 30 to November 15 to implement the program and complete the project.

Your staff consists of:

• Grace Cameron, the Marketing Specialist
• Levi Danon, the Writer/Editor
• Lakysha Feng Staff Assistant / Photographer

Source: Gido/Clements: Successful Project Management, CENGAGE Learning, 2015. P. 134

What you must do

1. View the Work Breakdown structure and consider the deliverables and sub-deliverables included.
2. Add all the activities to an MS Project File required to accomplish the deliverables listed in the WBS. You must contain at least three workouts per deliverable - each box on the chart. See WBS for the NFP case study in the week 3 class slides)
3. Add attributes in the comments for activities. For example, you can add a point to the printing and distribution activity to state finished by Nov 15. Attributes may contain:
   1. Specifications
   2. Constraints (dates, resources, costs, etc.)
   3. Assumptions
   4. Discretionary dependencies
4. Add WBS codes to all activities and WBS summary work packages.
5. Add a start date to your project.
6. Add exception days to the calendar.